James Cameron has a deep empathy with nature, as anyone who’s ever watched an Avatar movie can tell you. The Oscar-winning director took that further than most while making his 1989 movie The Abyss, revealing to The Hollywood Reporter that he gave a rat CPR on set to save its life.
In the movie, there’s a demonstration that involves immersing a rat in oxygenated water (a real, if experimental technology). Five rats were used to film the sequence, all of which survived. However, there was a close call with one, leading to Cameron’s first aid efforts.
In the THR interview, Cameron goes on to say that he named the rat “Beanie” and kept it as a pet afterwards. “Beanie and I bonded over the whole thing,” he said. “I saved his life. We were brothers. He used to sit on my desk while I was writing Terminator 2, and he lived to a ripe old age. He didn’t seem particularly traumatized, though I know the film is outlawed in the U.K. because of ‘animal cruelty.’”
